Vehicle Import Tariff: Are We Really Having this Conversation?

In recent news, the current Presidential administration has made claims that imported vehicles can pose serious security risks and has threatened to impose tariffs on vehicles that are imported into the US. This sound ludicrous and somewhat akin to someone that’s worried about things that don’t pose a threat, but has made up a scenario where a threat could be. Even so, when the executive office speaks about issues in any industry, there could be some backlash and cause for concern. Imposing tariffs on the automotive industry could do much more damage than good, especially in the US.

Patriotism is Great, But…

It would be hard to argue against the President being a patriotic person and he has shown this fairly consistently since he took office. Even so, there have been many times when the knee-jerk actions or words that are spoken need to be kept at bay and thought out before being released to the public. Although this current executive chooses to be an active social media user and seems to give us his thoughts on a regular basis, his targets should likely be placed somewhere other than the automotive industry.

Get Out Your Cart and Horse

Imposing tariffs on imported vehicles would do much more harm than good in the automotive industry. Because a price increase of models that are built outside the US would be twenty percent or more, many of the consumers in the US wouldn’t be able to afford to purchase these vehicles. Additionally, the added cost of doing business would cause some automakers, GM and Toyota included, to become smaller and have fewer operations in the US. The automotive industry is certainly global and makes the world feel smaller, which is why we shouldn’t impose a tariff on imported vehicles.

Right now, there are plants and operations from foreign automotive companies all around the US. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, VW, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and many other companies all have production and assembly plants in the US. Similarly, Ford and GM both have plants and operations around the globe as well. FCA is a company that blends a domestic name of Chrysler with Fiat to be a company that’s both Italian and American at the same time. An imposed tariff would cause us to move backward and not forwards, making the person who starts to build carts and hitch them to horses the first to a new backward market.

Is Security an Actual Concern?

If the current President is actually concerned about the foreign plants that are onUS soil becoming hotbeds for strikes against the US from within, there is an easy solution to this problem. The US could easily take control of these plants and render them ineffective in a short period of time. Security in the automotive industry with regards to a terrorist strike against the US doesn’t seem very likely. Currently, the administration in office is studying the potential of a strike and whether or not to impose the proposed tariffs, hopefully, they will come to the right and reasonable conclusion.